Investing in Todays Market

With the debt-load being reduced and also being able to refinance some properties over the past year, I feel I am in a much better place for financial success in the upcoming years. Instead of refinancing for lower monthly rates, I chose to refinance terms and reduce the amount of years off of the mortgages.
My Commercial Banker buddy would disagree and advise me to extract all of that equity out of the properties and keep myself highly leveraged. I think I can sleep well at night though. :-)

What about you? Have you refinanced lately? If so, did you cash out? or did you refinance with better terms?